"Third, if the NYT and Newsweek are right to say that Davis did almost no work for Freddie Mac, that (to my mind) makes the story worse, not better."

You're dead right. This is the most important part of the story.

If only voters read the news instead of being influenced by soundbites and memes-like he's a maverick and the straight talk express.

Yep. You take their money but you don't DO anything for them?

Nice work if you can get it.

WTF? Who BELIEVES they just liked the guy enough to shell out that kind of cash for kicks?

They wanted access to the candidate, and I'm SURE they got it.

Until now, that is.

The way I see it, McCambrian can do two things:

1. Fire Davis, claiming he was lied to.
2. Quit running for President.

I expect #1 sometime tomorrow morning.

"McCain camp in disarray after departure of campaign manager for LYING to candidate."

Yeah, he'll fire Davis, but Davis will stick around and advise the campaign, kinda like Phil Gramm.

Wait a minute -- this greedy motherfucker took our tax dollars from Fannie Mae to do nothing for years?

And if they weren't our tax dollars at the time, they are -- were -- now.

Are We Being Rick Rolled?

Mike Isikoff's Newsweek piece has these two conflicting bits of information:

Page 1
"Davis also said he "had a severed leave of absence" from his lobbying and consulting firm, and "I've taken no compensation from my firm for 18 months." "

Which would bring us to March 2007, when McCain "unofficially" announced his candidacy on Letterman (Feb. 28):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=53caXQKTs9Y

(McCain's formal announcement came on April 25, 2007 in Portsmouth, New Hampshire.)

(Also: what on earth does "severed leave of absence" mean? Google it. 3 results, all Rick Davis.)

Page 2
"Jill Hazelbaker, the McCain campaign communications director, said: "Rick left Davis Manafort and stopped taking salary from the firm in 2006"....

Hmmmmm. That would seem to be a gap of at least 2 months, possibly more. How do they reconcile that? Perhaps someone should ask Ms. Hazelbaker for clarification? And for a precise date after which Mr. Davis "stopped taking salary"?

Sheeeit.

And to think my wife's father is still going to vote for McCain because "the Dems want to sell the whole boat."

I'm downloading the official Dick Cheney photo and having it printed and framed as a Christmas present to him.

Tomorrow: "Davis has to be fired."

Thursday: If McCain can't fire Davis, then Davis "has to resign."

McCain says it all in this video. Straight Talk!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wJThPjvscFs

Gee, Steve Schmidt tries to pressure the head of NBC -- the next day they announce the Rachel Maddow show. Then he attacks the NYTimes, and the next day then run this.

Now maybe we can get him to insult someone who will do some research into the history of Cindy McCain's father -- who John McCain described as a 'role model' (which he was in at least one way, he too came home from a war -- WWII -- and immediately divorced his wife and remarried someone else) -- and the man responsible for setting him up in his beer distributorship and his one-time business partner, Kemper Marley.

Some very fascinating things might emerge. See Mark Kleiman's piece "Hardball."

http://www.samefacts.com/archives/john_mccain_/2008/09/hardball.php

or just Google Don Bolles -- the reporter, not the musician.

"The disclosure undercuts a statement by Mr. McCain on Sunday night that the campaign manager, Rick Davis, had had no involvement with the company for the last several years."

Undercuts.

McCain says that Davis had had no involvement for years. To the contrary, Davis's firm has "had involvement" to the tune of some $400,000 over just the period from late 2005 until LAST MONTH.

Undercuts. See, this is why New York Times editors make the big bucks. It takes hard, hard work (remember hard, hard work?) to get from Flat Out Fucking Lied to "undercuts a statement."

Isn't that amazing?

I am amused to see those who think RD's involvement w/ Freddie is grounds for his dismissal. McCain stood by Carly Fiorina and her golden parachute tonight, why would he have any issues with Davis? He has already put forth the 'reality' that Davis hasn't lobbied and hasn't received a paycheck. No more questions.

The McCain/Palin campaign is accountable to no one.

Yes, the profits of a partnership are distributed among equity partners pursuant to the partnership agreement. A key question is how they are defining "compensation". It could mean a few things and there could be various types of compensation agreed in the partnership agreement. Equity partners could set themselves a base distribution and then distribute the profits based on stake (if all stakes are not equitable) or how much business you generate for example. If he did not want to receive his distribution since joining the campaign, I would imagine that the firm would amend the partnership agreement to reflect that.

What is that old saw: If you are explaining, you are losing?

There are partnership distributions, and then there's accumulated partner equity.

It would be easy for him to not receive distributions, and for those distributions to be, well, distributed among other partners.

However, no matter how you look at it, if the value of the firm increases as a result of goodwill, press exposure, access to McCain, etc, then Davis benefits by being a partner. Partner distributions are the least of it; if they score additional generous clients who don't expect any actual work to be done, he'll benefit in the long run.

Of course, in the scheme of Washington slime and unethical behavior, this probably rates as mere blatant disingenuousness and doesn't rise to the level of the typical McCain camp mendacity.

I'm trying to remember whether K-1 (Partnership Income) forms are public documents. I suspect not, which is too bad; it would be interesting to see what Davis's looks like for 2006-2007 from that firm.

Well, time for a little outrage, isn't it?

I think John McCain should be facing a flood of populist anger right now, demanding among other things that he "reject and repudiate" his campaign manager.

Or maybe he just needs to be tarred more severely with the same brush.

I'd like to see more videos like this one that's been popping up on different sites... This is how you make clear that millionaire John McCain just does not live in the same world the rest of us do.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iz4Z6L4u8E4

That's the kind of anger I'm looking for. (Funny too...)

The McCain campaign is such shit. How did this happen? Last year, I was expecting and looking forward to intense debates, re-examining issues and retrospect on the past eight years by both parties' candidates. I thought people were demanding better politics. I figured whoever was nominated by either party would have been centrists, more or less. When McCain won the nomination I figured he would have gone middle of the road, you know the long-term and smart move for November. How sorely mistaken I have been.

The second he couldn't get his dying campaign back on track he hired who any wealthy Senator with 26+ years of Senate experience would have: Lobbyists, his bread and butter. But that wasn't enough, he also needed the same people that orchestrated his defeat in 2000, Rovians. You figure you get all these people in the same room and the Presidency would be a sure win - even if it takes lying, stealing and cheating to get there.

Wait, so all the slander, libel and lies aren't enough to take a commanding lead? That shouldn't happen. Let's pick a purely political VP choice and elevate her to GOP rockstar status, you know the gun toting, pro-life type - to shore up our defense. After throwing in everything including the kitchen sink, your own campaign staff will complete your own political suicide in an ambitious effort to capture the White House. /end rant

In an unrelated note: Obama is up 9 points nation wide against McCain.

The fact is Freddie paid [Rick] Davis and Manafort a $15K monthly retainer for lobbying services because of Davis's ties to McCain. Who cares if it was Davis or his partners who got the distribution and who cares if Davis was technically a consultant as opposed to an official lobbyist. He's conflicted, pure and simple, and that makes McCain conflicted.

Now Old Straight Talk will cover us in an avalanche of double talk.

The difference between Schmidt, Davis, and King Karl is that Rove always knew enough to suck up to reporters. If he picked on a reporter it was to send a focused message. All the while he courted the rest. Schmidt and Davis don't feel any need to be deferential to reporters. They are going after entire news organizations for not being deferential to their campaign. They are reaping what they have sown.

"Severed Leave of Absence."

Now, I can't guarantee my definition; it's a reality-based definition, after all, but I'm pretty sure it means that Davis's "leave of absence" was "severed."

As in "terminated."

As in "he is no longer on a leave of absence."

Well when you are square in the middle of it, the stuff sticks to your shoes. Read T. Friedman's oped in NYT.It says the square right where it belongs.

John McCain is in deep shit and he doesn't have the shoes for it!

Here's my take away from all the financial stuff unearthing. There is so much money being passed around from one entity to the next for no purpose other than to insure that the vast sums of money keep getting passed around. And that money starts with the American taxpayer. Taxpayers are being used like bottomless ATM cards. And when the money dries up, we'll print more.

Now you've got Bush encouraging other nations to print more of their money to bail out their financial institutions just to keep our dollar from disintegrating.

It's like Bush is asking everyone to commit suicide at once. If they do, Bush wins.

[T]he article also says that Davis was hired as a "consultant", not a lobbyist. So if he says that he didn't do any "lobbying work", this is probably true, both in a technical sense (he was a consultant), and, more broadly, in that he doesn't seem to have done much work of any kind.

As to your fist point, please do not be fooled by the flim-flam that is the designation "consultant." That term says absolutely nothing about what a person's duties are -- particularly in the world of PR/lobbying firms. What it usually denotes is nothing more than that the firm is not paying payroll taxes fo the individual. Lots of lobbyists in this town are designated as "consultants"; and it's true of other professionals as well.

Your broader point, though, that Davis wasn't actually doing any work as conventionally understood is sound. This money is a down payment for future access, nothing more and nothing less.

In case you all don’t know about it, here is a web site that contains many common partnership K-1’s. It’s an easy way to download client K-1’s.

https://www.taxpackagesupport.com/(S(5f2qae45qvqynw55nm5qov45))/k1SupportHome.aspx

You usually only need the client last name and their social security number.

By the way, as someone commented above, the PS Agreement would have to be amended, removing the party as a Partner to change a profit-sharing arrangement. One can opt to not receive distributions, but that profit will still accrue to your capital account for distribution at a later time. Even if he transferred his PS interest to another party, I'm sure that he would make it so that the $ was retrievable at another date.

"Gee, Steve Schmidt tries to pressure the head of NBC -- the next day they announce the Rachel Maddow show. Then he attacks the NYTimes, and the next day then run this." - Prup

You don't think this was a preemptive strike do you??? Nah...